Vaccines against various and evolving strains of influenza are important from a community health stand point, as well as commercially, since each year numerous individuals are infected with different strains and types of influenza virus. Infants, the elderly, those without adequate health care and immuno-compromised persons are at special risk of death from such infections. Compounding the problem of influenza infections is that novel influenza strains evolve readily and can spread amongst various species, thereby necessitating the continuous production of new vaccines.
Numerous vaccines capable of producing a protective immune response specific for such different and influenza viruses/virus strains have been produced for over 50 years and include whole virus vaccines, split virus vaccines, surface antigen vaccines and live attenuated virus vaccines. However, while appropriate formulations of any of these vaccine types are capable of producing a systemic immune response, live attenuated virus vaccines have the advantage of also being able to stimulate local mucosal immunity in the respiratory tract. Considerable work in the production of influenza viruses, and fragments thereof, for production of vaccines has been done by the present inventors and co-workers; see, e.g., U.S. application Ser. Nos. 60/420,708, filed Oct. 23, 2002; 60/574,117, filed May 24, 2004; Ser. No. 10/423,828, filed Apr. 25, 2003; 60/578,962, filed Jun. 12, 2004; and Ser. No. 10/870,690 filed Jun. 16, 2004, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
Because of the continual emergence (or re-emergence) of different influenza strains, new influenza vaccines are continually desired. Such vaccines typically are created using antigenic moieties of the newly emergent virus strains, thus, polypeptides and polynucleotides of novel, newly emergent, or newly re-emergent virus strains (especially sequences of antigenic genes) are highly desirable.
The present invention provides new and/or newly isolated influenza hemagglutinin and neuraminidase variants that are capable of use in production of numerous types of vaccines as well as in research, diagnostics, etc. Numerous other benefits will become apparent upon review of the following.